As an avid traveler of the gorgeous roads of these United States, I tend to tick up a lot of miles on my cars every year. In just the last six months, in fact, I’ve tacked another 20,000 miles on my Audi A3 E-Tron. When I’m driving something as new and well-maintained as the little Audi hatchback, I usually travel with little more than a credit card, an iPhone, and a AAA membership to take care of anything if the unlikely occurs. With some of my older and perhaps more fragile sports cars or motorcycles, however, I get a bit more nervous about breaking down on the side of the road. And that’s especially true when I’m driving somewhere remote, out of cell phone range.
For this summer I’ve decided to finally put together a kit of tools and repair components I might need in order to affect roadside repairs and get it home. I’m a reasonably handy wrench when needs arise, and I’ve been known to make a few fixes in the past even without a comprehensive toolkit. It’s better to have and not need one than to need it in a pinch. I went to The Cheap Tool Store to get a few necessities and I think I’ve come up with the right answer for everything I would need for a few days or weeks on the road. Check out the kit I’ve assembled and let me know what you think I’m missing.
The tools
Every car and motorcycle will require a different tool kit with different ingredients. My regular rides are generally old and German, so I pack metric tools and torx keys, for example. With a full set of deep well sockets, a complement of stubby box wrenches, a variety of pliers, cutters, and a multi-head screwdriver, I can take apart and put back together almost everything on any of my cars. It might be tedious and annoying to not have electric ratchets or impacts, but they’ll still get the job done. A flashlight and a couple extra batteries also come in handy. A nice sharp knife can also be helpful in a pinch for survival purposes beyond just fixing your car. Definitely make sure you have all of the tools needed to remove one of your car’s wheels, including any potential wheel lock keys, the correct socket for your wheel nut, a breaker bar, and a jack that will fit under your car. If you have lowered your car, as I have, make sure the factory jack still fits underneath.
The best bet to building the kit you need is to get yourself under the hood and perform a top-to-bottom tune up and check-over before you leave for the start of the trip. Not only can you make sure you have all of the tools you needed for those tasks in your kit before you leave, but you can spend a few minutes looking at potential failure points and deciding what tools you would need to affect a repair or replacement, or simply replacing them before you take off. Check your shop manual for the procedure to replace an accessory drive belt, for example, and bring all of those tools. We’ll talk a little more about what spare parts to bring later.
The gunk
In addition to tools, here are a few other universal necessities you might need to pack along as well. I don’t go anywhere without a fully-charged jump pack. If you can, make sure you get one with a built-in tire inflator. You can bring a bike pump and push the air in yourself, but we have the tools to avoid such manual labor. Speaking of inflating tires, you’re bound to get a nail or a spoon or something jammed into your tire if you drive enough miles, so pack a tire repair kit as well. They’re cheap and easy to use, so that’s a no-brainer. At the top of the photo you’ll see my special tool to fix problems with motion. The can of WD-40 comes in handy when you have something that should be moving freely but doesn’t, and the duct tape wrapped around it is for when you have something that is moving freely when it shouldn’t. Apply liberally.
If something needs to be fixed in place but duct tape won’t do the job, make sure you have a full spate of zip ties, and I also like to carry a roll of metal safety wire. Some thread locker is also helpful when pesky fasteners start backing out after a few bumpy days of off-roading or driving rutted two-tracks. I also like to pack a bunch of extra fuses and my travel pack always has some spare cash in it for JIC emergencies. Rags will also help for when you need to clean up.
Everything else?
OK, let’s get down to spare parts. The three things you need to make an engine run are spark, fuel, and air. Each of those things have corresponding failure points. If you’re driving something vintage make sure you bring a spare distributor cap, rotor, points, condenser, coil, and a spare set of spark plugs. Depending on how deep you want to get, you can bring a full spare fuel system, but at a minimum a spare fuel pump and fuel filter would be helpful, as well as a length of spare fuel line and some clamps. Bring some spare carb jets, particularly if you’re heading to a different elevation, and know how to use them. You changed your oil and air filters before you left, didn’t you? Cool, then you don’t need to bring extras. But your car burns oil, so bring a couple quarts. Belts, my god you’ll need belts! Water pump and hoses? Throw them in, too! Might as well have a bit of hose in case you develop a vacuum leak, too. You probably won’t need an alternator, but it doesn’t hurt to have one of those as well.
Of course there are things you may need for yourself as well. Bring a standard first aid kit, as well as at least a week worth of any medications you take in case you get really stranded. If you’re heading somewhere particularly desolate, or will be driving through particularly bad weather, make sure you have a rudimentary survival kit with a blanket, some extra non-parishable foods, and the tools to start a fire. And now that your entire trunk is full of stuff, you’re ready to go on your road trip.
Going on bikes?
Obviously, if you’re on a motorcycle you’ll want to be a bit more weight and space conscious when you’re packing up. Cut some tools down, buy smaller and more compact versions of a tool, bring the bike-specific tools you’ll need, and be prepared for everything to go wrong anyway. My BMW GS doesn’t have a chain or tubed tires, so my tool kit is pretty small already, but looking at the kit Ari built in the video above, I could stand to make it a little smaller. Watch the video and it’ll tell you everything you need to know about packing to travel on motorcycles.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution here, but the fact that you’re thinking about what you need before you take off and not scrambling to pack your kit the night before a big trip says you’re going to be just fine. I like to keep everything in a little duffle bag, and I’m particularly annoyed by errant clatter in my car, so I try to wrap everything I can in the shop rags to keep metal-on-metal to a minimum. Don’t overthink it, you’ll probably be fine.